Chapter 702

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The words “Creation,” “Dissolution,” etc., do not correctly render the right meaning of either Manvantara or Pralaya. The Vishnu Purâna enumerates several: “The dissolution of all things is of four kinds,” Parâshara is made to say: Naimittika (Occasional), when Brahmâ slumbers (his Night, when, “at the end of this Day occurs a re-coalescence of the Universe, called Brahmâ’s contingent re-coalescence,” because Brahmâ is this Universe itself); Prâkritika (Elemental), when the return of this Universe to its original nature is partial and physical; Âtyantika (Absolute), identification of the Embodied with the incorporeal Supreme Spirit—Mahâtmic state, whether temporary or until the following Mahâ Kalpa: also Absolute Obscuration—as of a whole Planetary Chain, etc.; and Nitya (Perpetual), Mahâ Pralaya for the Universe, Death—for man. Nitya is the extinction of life, like the “extinction of a lamp,” also “in sleep at night.” Nitya Sarga is “constant or perpetual creation,” as Nitya Pralaya is “constant or perpetual destruction of all that is born.” “That which ensues after a minor dissolution is called ephemeral creation.” (Vishnu Purâna, Wilson’s Trans., i. 113, 114.) The subject is so difficult that we are obliged to repeat our statements.